By February 1957, the Long Trail News had lost patience with the original structure on the south slope of Whiteface Mountain — a 1922 open-front lodge built by Fred Mould of Morrisville that had, after thirty-five years, become more wildlife refuge than hiker shelter. The newsletter’s shelter report was terse and damning: "Whiteface Shelter should be rebuilt. It offers shelter and nothing else unless one considers the shelter for porcupines that it affords."
The GMC acted. In 1958 the Long Trail Patrol demolished the original Whiteface Lodge and built a new structure at the same location on the south slope of Whiteface Mountain, on the Long Trail in Division X between Bolton Lodge and French Camp. The new shelter — an Adirondack-style log lean-to with wire bunks for five to ten persons, no stove — cost $556.16 to build, as reported in the Long Trail News of February 1959. The 16th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1960) marked the transition: "Whiteface Shelter, a log canto with bunks for 6 to 10, was completely rebuilt by the Long Trail Patrol in 1958, replacing the old structure which had sheltered hikers since 1922."
That construction cost — $556.16 — for a structure at roughly 3,000 feet of elevation, three miles from the nearest road, accessible only by trail, gives some measure of what it cost in 1958 to build a shelter by hand in the Vermont woods.
Setting and Views
The shelter sits just below the summit cone of Whiteface Mountain (3,715 feet) on the south slope, where the Whiteface Trail coming up from Beaver Meadow Lodge meets the Long Trail. The Long Trail continues northward from the shelter, circling up to the wooded summit of Whiteface a short distance above, where "a spur trail on the right leads to several open spots which permit views in almost every direction," as the 1977 guide put it.
From the shelter itself, the views south and southwest are the shelter’s greatest gift to hikers. Every edition of the Long Trail Guide Book from 1960 through at least 1985 described the same panorama in nearly identical language: "From the shelter, Madonna’s cone is visible above the Beaver Meadow basin. To the right of it, the Nose of Mansfield is seen above Chilcoot Pass and farther along, beyond a shoulder of Morse Mt., is the Chin. Both peaks of Mansfield are perfectly placed above depressions in the nearer range." It is the kind of view that, once described, keeps its description — because the description is already exactly right.
The Sterling Section and Bob Hagerman
From at least 1966, Whiteface Shelter was maintained by the Sterling Section of the Green Mountain Club, the Morrisville-based unit responsible for the Long Trail from Chilcoot Pass to French Camp. The 1966 Long Trail Guide Book (18th edition) formally confirmed this arrangement: the Sterling Section maintains "the Long Trail from Chilcoot Pass to French Camp, also Whiteface Shelter and Beaver Meadow Lodge."
For much of the shelter’s most active maintenance era, the Sterling Section’s work at Whiteface was driven by two men: Brent Teillon and Robert (Bob) Hagerman. Their names appear again and again in the shelter’s maintenance records from the late 1960s through the late 1970s. Hagerman, who also served as a former editor of the Long Trail News, became so associated with work in the Sterling Range that, after his death, a viewpoint on the Long Trail just north of Chilcoot Pass was named in his memory. The 1985 Long Trail Guide Book (23rd edition) records "Hagerman Overlook" as a "unique view of Mt. Mansfield and the Sterling Range."
The Porcupine Problem
Porcupines had haunted the original Whiteface Lodge, and the new shelter inherited its predecessor’s appeal to them. The open-faced Adirondack lean-to design — with its salt-soaked wood, accumulated food scraps, and ready-made shelter from the elements — was, as a 1971 maintenance note drily observed, "heaven on earth" for the local porcupine population.
On November 6, 1971, a large work party organized by Teillon and Hagerman set out from Morristown Corners, driving by trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles to the end of the newly constructed road toward Beaver Meadow. Among the party were Sterling Section members and a Boy Scout troop, Troop 76 of Morrisville, with Scoutmaster William Myette. While the group carried boards — twelve feet long, six inches wide, a full inch thick, each pre-treated with creosote — up the Whiteface Trail to the shelter, Teillon and Jeff Limoges made their own side expedition. As Hagerman later recorded: "Brent Teillon and Jeff Limoge meanwhile were doing yeoman duty slogging up through the deep snow (without snowshoes) to make a detailed inspection of Whiteface Shelter for repairs and improvements to be made there. There was slight diversion for them in their unsuccessful effort to de-tree a porcupine so that he might be dispatched to hedgehog heaven."
The porcupine won. But the work party made substantial improvements: the wire screening floor was removed so accumulated porcupine dung could be cleaned out, a new creosoted board floor was laid, cracks between logs were patched with extra boards, the roof was patched, screening around the base of the shelter was repaired, a crude woodshed was built, trail signs went up, and the fireplace was rebuilt. Hagerman, meanwhile, built a roaring fire and made gallons of hot chocolate in a large pot. The Boy Scouts, with excess energy, continued to the summit of Whiteface and returned. "A successful trip," Hagerman concluded, "due in large measure to the help of the Boy Scouts. All who participated felt a great sense of accomplishment having put Whiteface Shelter in excellent shape."
The Privy Relocation
A different kind of wildlife problem arrived in the mid-1970s. At the Sterling Section’s request, a unit of the federal Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) had constructed a new privy at Whiteface Shelter, sited about 50 feet to one side of the lean-to. The shelter’s previous toilet facilities had been, as the Long Trail News of February 1976 put it, only "the crudest." The new outhouse was built of plywood siding — which, at 3,000 feet in the Vermont backcountry, turned out to be "an epicurean delight for porcupines." In a short time, porkies had gnawed away more than three-quarters of the building’s walls, leaving outhouse users with "little privacy or protection from the weather."
The solution was to move the privy to a better-drained site about 200 feet away from the shelter. This required removing the roof, carrying the ~200-pound structure through the woods at 3,000 feet of elevation — three miles from the nearest roadhead — and reassembling it at the new location. The Long Trail News covered the operation with evident pleasure, noting that the Sterling Section had "considerable help from certain state and federal agencies" in what was, technically, a house-moving project, even if the house in question was a small outhouse.
New Sill Logs and a New Roof
By the mid-1970s, the shelter itself needed major structural work. A June 1975 inspection by Hagerman found the shelter "in generally good condition but sill logs are deteriorating so their replacement will be needed in the not distant future." The Long Trail News of August 1977 reported that the Long Trail Patrol had by then replaced the deteriorated sill logs — lifting the entire shelter with pry bars and installing new logs underneath — as part of its seasonal maintenance program.
That same summer, the Sterling Section organized a work trip to replace the roof. On August 6, 1977, a crew arrived at Whiteface Shelter to tackle what Hagerman described as "a patchwork affair to begin with, assembled from pieces of roofing which probably had been on the shelter which had preceded this one." The old galvanized metal roof had been the subject of continuing complaints about leaking. Two preparatory steps had already been taken: the LT Patrol’s sill log replacement was done, and Teillon had driven supplies by four-wheel-drive vehicle to within a quarter mile of the shelter before getting hung up on a rock, requiring an unplanned unload and walk for help.
On the day itself, work started at 8:45 a.m. under threat of rain. Rain came. Four leaks in the old roof provided "very wet evidence of the need for a new roof." The crew removed the old roof, nailed new boards in place, and laid an underlayer of 15-pound felt roofing — at which point the rain intensified. The underlayer made the roof at least temporarily waterproof, and all hands went home. Finishing the job fell to GMC caretakers at nearby shelters.
Sill Logs Again: 1996
The shelter required yet another structural intervention in the spring of 1996. As the Long Trail News (Spring 1997) reported, during the section’s spring walk-through, "Sterling Section workers cut and peeled a large diameter spruce to replace both sill logs." The work required jacks, a chain saw, and careful fitting: "Bob’s work with the chain saw produced some horizontal cuts on the new piece, which made it easier to get the right fit under the existing logs of the sidewall." With the help of GMC Field Assistant Tim Tierney and Sterling Pond caretaker Michael Moss, Sterling Section stalwarts Bob Lindemann and Smith Edwards hauled up the jacks and replaced the north side before the rest of the crew arrived. The south side followed. "After a little tidying up work on the roof and foundation, we wrapped up the shelter work before mid-afternoon."
It was the second time the shelter’s sill logs had been replaced — the previous round in 1985 had "spliced and partly replaced the sill log on the north side of the shelter, but it didn’t last as long as we hoped it would."
Into the Present
The summer 1998 issue of the Long Trail News called for volunteers to repair Whiteface Shelter, with the Sterling Section seeking help for a work party June 29 through July 3.
In 2002, GMC’s LT relocation through Smugglers’ Notch prompted a committee to evaluate shelter needs along the revised route between Taft Lodge and Whiteface Shelter. The 2003 Trail Talk (Montpelier Section) reported that some hikers were now bypassing the Sterling Pond shelters entirely, traveling from the Elephant’s Head Trail area directly to Whiteface Shelter. The shelter remained a fixed point in hikers’ plans even as the trail around it changed.
Nine photographs in the GMC’s records trace the shelter’s condition across decades: a 1976 image shows the original leaky metal roof; 1977 images document the new sill log installation and the roof work; later photos from 2002, 2009, 2014, and 2017 show a shelter that has aged but persisted. One photo, by John Need, is captioned simply "Inu takes a snooze."
A 2013 poem published in the Long Trail News alongside a photo of Whiteface Shelter placed the shelter in the landscape exactly as the guidebooks have always described it: "The Nose of Mt. Mansfield sticks up / behind Madonna Mountain’s shoulder / exactly where it should be." Three years later, in 2016, a hiker’s poem titled "Amulets Along Vermont’s Long Trail" used Whiteface Shelter as its opening image — a "worn wooden shelter" at dawn, its corners full of spiders, a stranger’s alarm clock shattering the dark.
After more than sixty years, the shelter built for $556.16 in 1958 to replace a shelter porcupines had made uninhabitable is still doing its job on the south slope of Whiteface Mountain.
Sources
Long Trail News, February 1957, p. 2. Green Mountain Club. ("Whiteface Shelter should be rebuilt…")
Long Trail News, February 1959. Green Mountain Club. (Cost of construction: $556.16.)
Long Trail News, February 1966, p. 8. Green Mountain Club. (Sterling Section maintenance record.)
Long Trail News, February 1976, p. 8. Green Mountain Club. (Privy relocation.)
Long Trail News, August 1977, p. 8. Green Mountain Club. (Sill logs and new roof.)
Long Trail News, Spring 1997, p. 6. Green Mountain Club. (1996 sill log replacement.)
Long Trail News, Spring 1997, p. 18. Green Mountain Club. (Sterling Section history.)
Long Trail News, Summer 1998, p. 10. Green Mountain Club. (Volunteers needed.)
Long Trail News, Spring 2013, p. 14. Green Mountain Club. (Photo and poem.)
Long Trail News, Summer 2016, p. 7. Green Mountain Club. ("Amulets Along Vermont’s Long Trail.")
Long Trail News, Winter 2018, p. 9. Green Mountain Club. (Winter hike account.)
Smoke and Blazes (Killington), Vol. 43, 1991, p. 3. Killington Section, Green Mountain Club. (Visit account.)
Trail Talk (Montpelier), Fall 2003, p. 1. Montpelier Section, Green Mountain Club. (LT relocation and shelter needs.)
Teillon, Brent and Hagerman, Bob. Trip report, November 6, 1971. (Maintenance work party and porcupine account.)
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 16th ed. (1960), p. 56.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 17th ed. (1963), p. 57.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 18th ed. (1966), p. 58.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 19th ed. (1968), p. 58.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 20th ed. (1971), p. 62.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 21st ed. (1977), p. 72.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 23rd ed. (1985), p. 74.
Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. P. 133.
